Posts from May 2006
May 31, 2006
Can I please see a fat staff?
"Excuse me miss, but I'm feeling a bit invalid, can you please direct me to the proper fat staff for my changing?"
I thought the statement on the bottom of my recent boarding pass was pretty funny. Far Eastern Air Transport really needs to get a clue. (Click on the photo to enlarge)
May 30, 2006
Live at the Forbidden City
This came through my inbox today from a musician friend who had a very cool gig at the Living Room a while back. Damn, so much for that book idea.
Dear friends and interested parties,
I'm pleased to announce that, at long last, my book Live at the Forbidden City: Musical Encounters in China and Taiwan has been published and is now available for purchase online at iUniverse Online Bookstore.
The book is initially available through my publisher, iUniverse, and within 4-6 weeks will also be available through Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Books-A-Million.com, and other major online booksellers. It can also be ordered by any bookstore through the Ingram Book Group and Baker & Taylor wholesale distribution channels. Please spread the word to anyone you might know who has an interest in world music, Chinese and Asian culture, or travel writing ¡V thanks! I'll be setting up several author events in the Pacific Northwest (local residents will receive details) and hopefully in other regions as well.
See below for a brief description of the book; for more information, please visit www.dennisrea.com/forbidden.html
Many thanks for your interest, and to many of you for helping to make
this a reality!
Dennis
------------------------
"Live at the Forbidden City offers a singular look at the rapidly evolving Chinese popular music scene, as seen through the eyes of one of the first progressive Western musicians to perform extensively in both China and Taiwan.
"In the 1980s and 90s, American author and musician Dennis Rea was an unofficial musical ambassador to the East, playing concerts in venues ranging from sports arenas to illicit underground nightclubs to TV broadcasts viewed by millions of Chinese -- frequently under bizarre circumstances and the constant threat of harassment by Communist Party authorities. Spiced with informative reflections on Chinese music and culture, Live at the Forbidden City interweaves vivid, often comical depictions of Rea's musical adventures with an insider's look at China's emergent rock music phenomenon, richly descriptive tales of travels in China's ethnic minority regions, and an eyewitness account of the violent civil uprising that broke out in the city of Chengdu at the same time as the world-shaking events at Tiananmen Square."
"Live at the Forbidden City is at once a witty and engaging memoir of an adventurous musical life, and a unique document of an unprecedented era of political tumult and cultural transformation in China" ¡X Andrew F. Jones, author, Like a Knife and Yellow Music
May 27, 2006
Taipei, a suburb of Shanghai
Being back in Taipei after a month in Mainland makes you realize just how far Taiwan has fallen behind China.
Everything slows down to a crawl when you are here, the humidity engulfs you, and you wonder where this little island will be in another 5 years.
Eighteen years ago you would hear Taiwanese talk about China as this sort of uncivilized place filled with people who happened to speak Chinese too. Ten years ago it was like, "Damn, those Chinese are moving fast." Five years ago it was, "You haven't bought property in Shanghai yet? What are you, an idiot?" Now it's like, "Oh shit we're dead."
When the Chinese ask me about Taiwan, I say it's like a nice suburb of Shanghai. SUVs, nice shopping, movie theaters, with a sort of carefree pace to life.
May 20, 2006
It's HR stupid
I was talking the other day with my old highschool friend, Dana, who works with HR departments globally to get their placements settled down in Asia. Since my most recent project was similar, working with embassies and multinationals in Beijing, I wanted some tips on the HR department's needs.
"Corbett, I just need to correct you, so you don't sound stupid. It's 'HR' not 'H&R'."
"Really I said H&R?"
"Yup, a couple times."
"Doh. I guess I'm so used to the music business where I've been working so long with A&R people....it just comes naturally. I'll drop the '&' for sure, thanks."
After we got through the business of HR, we had a chance to catch up on old classmates. It turns out that all of us went entreprenurial ways. I pointed out to Dana that we were also all members of the same club in high school, DECA, which is an association for students and teachers of Marketing, Management and Entrepreneurship, which I was president of.
The most entreprenurial one of us is now Martha (who is quite tall, and quite hot), who has a business in surburban New Jersey selling sex toys at marketing parties for housewives in their homes. Kind of like Tupperware with a kinky twist.
May 08, 2006
Cruising around
I met up with DJ Ijapa Chen (Ijapa apparently mean "Turtle" in Swahili) at a rehearsal studio to check out his new reggae band. He's a dj actually but also a concert clarinetist, and I promised to show him some tricks on playing reggae. It was a trip getting there, in the middle of some hutong down an industrial back alley of a road somewhere between who knows and where am I. I was jealous because they had a 4x10 Sunn cabinet in there, which I really wanted to cart back, and two Ampeg 8x10s (I guess in Beijing they take their bass very seriously). We jammed for a while, with the two MCs, and it was a cross cultural experience of sorts. I felt kind of like an old college student but I enjoyed the whole thing.
Later I hooked up with my friend Em (another DJ) from Taiwan who is studying at the Beijing Film Academy, and we had three heaping plates of killer dumplings about the size of a hamster, a beer, three cold dishes, and some other stuff for a total of RMB40. Now that's cheap. He took me to the best pirate DVD shop I have ever been to. Imagine a DVD shop in a dark alley behind a famous film school that caters to arty film students....everything from Battleship Potemkin to Nanuk the Eskimo was there - all for RMB6/each. Then we hung out in the studio of some guitar player who used to be the face of Benetton a few years back. Now he plays an ES-335 and is a bossa nova freak.
On a different note, I stumbled onto this awesome video:
May 07, 2006
Jazz hunting in Beijing
It was my night off and I was needing to hear some live music, so I ventured out to explore the local Beijing jazz scene. My first stop was just around the corner (remember in BJ, around the corner can be a 20 minute walk) at Chaoyang Park's south gate. In a fancy new complex there called Palm Springs, there's a loungy jazz bar which was supposed to be pretty good. I saddled up to the empty mood lit marble bar and ordered an expensive Belgium beer. It was Saturday night, and the place only had like 8 people in there, mostly a scattered tall cute girl here and there sitting with a middle aged man in a Nautica polo shirt. The music started and all I could think of was finishing my beer and getting the hell out of there. It was your typical awful hotel lounge band singing "You are the sunshine of my life....whoa whoaaaaaa..." Then the singer came on and I ran out.
My next stop was across the street at a New Orleans type of place called The Big Easy which was a completely different story. It was crowded and the band was grooving. The black lady singer was belting and putting on a great show, and the band supported her really well. That was a good fun set, and a good Samuel Adams beer.
After that I cruised down to the CD Jazz Cafe which was supposed to be a cool place, but they were renovating, so I popped over to Sanlitunnanlu to check out Browns Pub which supposedly had jazz bands. They had a DJ and the crowd was office expats, so I U-turned and went up the street dodging the annoying "Ladybar?" and "Nice massage?" hawkers getting in your face, and rambled over to The Tree for one last beer. That's when I ran into Kaiser who I hadn't seen in years, sitting with a visiting English journalist named Dave, and we ended up the evening in good conversation with a couple of hearty Kwak beers in funky glasses.
May 03, 2006
Ni shuo shemma?
It's Golden Week here in Beijing, and most people leave, so the city is nice and empty for a few days. We finished up meetings early, met up with an old friend Leslie, who took a year from the Journal to write her book. She's writing about migrant women workers in China, and our pal Ben plays a nice part in it, as her safe escort through the seedy underbelly of Dongguan.
Afterwards, we headed over to the MIDI music festival in Hai Dian park which is a big outdoor festival with Beijing's punk, metal, and indie kids all displaying their colors and haircuts. People were selling stuff on blankets, camped out in tents, selling skewers, and playing frisbee as hard rock and electronica filled the air on the five stages. It was a dustier version of a Grateful Dead concert, and we made our way over to the Lee jeans tent, which was organized by our event promoter friend, Christine. Christine had prepared free drinks the day before, and our agreement was that I'd bring my sax today to show one of the DJs (who is a concert clarinetist as well - with a large tattoo of Benny Goodman on his arm) how to jam over reggae tracks, and she would provide the party for my friends. He cued up some hiphop/reggae tracks, and I began playing, trading fours with him. I explained some of what I was doing with the phrasing, and how to determine the key as well as the cool notes to emphasize. We traded licks for a while, and he started getting the jist of it. Meanwhile a sizabable crowd organized, which was cool too.
Afterwards Tiff, Brett, Tony, and I were all sipping Moet in a small backstage room, hanging out with the local DJs when we sort of spontaneously got into a Chinese freestyle contest with them that lasted like an hour. This was hilarious. Later we discover that we had been head to head freestyling with the China DMC champ, DJ Wordy, and three time Iron Mic freestyle champ, MC Webber.
I'll be hanging out with these guys more, as they have some great rhymes and know how to have a good time.
I've never figured out whether it's pronounced "Moe's (like owned by one of three stooges) or Moss (like that guy out of Bonanza), but the one down the hill from me is open until 2am most days, which means that if I get out of the club early enough, I can catch the best burger in town, the muo si la bao or the Spicy Mos Burger. They have lots of jalapenos and 
